No other subject of discourse intervenes between the different accounts, which spread through the country, of successive acts of devastation; and these, told in chimney corners, swell themselves in our affrighted imaginations into the most terrific ideas.  We never sit down, either to dinner, or supper, but the least noise spreads a general alarm, and prevents us from enjoying the comforts of our meals.  The very appetite proceeding from labour and peace of mind is gone!  Our sleep is disturbed by the most frightful dreams!  Sometimes I start awake, as if the great hour of danger was come; at other times the howling of our dogs seems to announce the arrival of the enemy:  we leap out of bed, and run to arms; my poor wife, with panting bosom, and silent tears, takes leave of me, as if we were to see each other no more.  She snatches the youngest children from their beds, who, suddenly awakened, increase by their innocent questions the horrour of the dreadful moment!  She tries to hide them in the cellar, as if our cellar was inaccessible to the fire!  I place all my servants at the window, and myself at the door, where I am determined to perish.  Fear industriously increases every sound; we all listen; each communicates to each other his fears and conjectures.  We remain thus, sometimes for whole hours, our hearts and our minds racked by the most anxious suspense!  What a dreadful situation!  A thousand times worse than that of a soldier engaged in the midst of a most severe conflict!  Sometimes feeling the spontaneous courage of a man, I seem to wish for the decisive minute; the next instant a message from my wife, sent by one of the children, quite unmans me.  Away goes my courage, and I descend again into the deepest despondency:  at last, finding it was a false alarm, we return once more to our beds; but what good can the sleep of nature do us, when interrupted with such scenes?”

* * * * *

But we will suppose our planter to have escaped the scalping knife and tomahawk; and in the course of years situate in a thick, settled neighbourhood of planters like himself, who have struggled through all the foregoing difficulties:  he is now a man of some consequence, builds a house by the side of his former hut, which now serves him for a kitchen; and as he is comfortably situate, we will leave him to the enjoyment of the fruits of his industry.

Such a being has often ideas of liberty, and a contempt of vassalage and slavery, which do honour to human nature.

The planter I have endeavoured to describe, I have supposed to be sober and industrious:  but when a man of an opposite description makes such an attempt, he often degenerates into a demisavage; he cultivates no more land than will barely supply the family with bread, or rather makes his wife, and children perform that office.  His whole employment is to procure skins, and furs, to exchange for rum, brandy, and ammunition;